Generic pages ranking above lower level more specific pages (region vs city)

[zulu_dude]

One of my clients has a directory of widgets, categorised by location (e.g. widget type -> region -> town).

On several town specific search terms (e.g. Blue Widgets in MyTown) the region page is ranking higher than the more specific town page... it would be a far better experience for the user if they were taken to the town specific page they were looking for, but Google doesn't seem to agree.

I've compared the page metrics for both, the region page does have a higher page authority, but not by a huge margin. I'm pretty confident that the site has a good internal linking structure and is well constructed in terms of on-page elements. Is my only other way forward to build more quality links to the town specific page?

Any thoughts?

[aakk9999]

Yes unfortunately this has been observed before. In some cases home page ranked instead of internal pages, in other cases it was a different internal page as in your case. Here are few threads we had on this subject before, maybe conversation in there helps.

Wrong page ranking over the desired page?
Jul 30, 2013
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4597586.htm [webmasterworld.com]

My homepage always appears instead of more relevant pages
Sep 10, 2012
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4493124.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Wrong Target Pages Ranking, Anyone seen this before?
Jun 22, 2011
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4329288.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[zulu_dude]

Super, thanks! Apologies I didn't reply sooner, I was expecting a notification email but it never arrived.